This is more of a point of curiosity than concern since I'm a pretty skinny guy, but I recently decided to do a little experiment with cutting out starches and dairy from my diet. Bread and alcohol especially have started giving me nasty heartburn, so I figured I'd try going very strict for a few weeks and see what happened.

A typical day's worth of eating looks like: 1/3 lb bacon + iced coffee + apple for breakfast, 1 lb salad (mesclun mix, baby spinach, grape tomatoes, grilled chicken, chopped red onions, red and banana peppers, black olives + a bunch of olive oil) for lunch, a couple plums + hard-boiled eggs for a mid-afternoon snack, every couple days I'll eat about 1k calories worth of almonds, and then for dinner I usually eat either a steak cooked in butter (should I swap that for something else?) or a half-chicken from Whole Foods (ha sometimes both). Sometimes some more iced coffee or tea (unsweetened) in the afternoon. I eat fish a couple times a week for dinner. I used to drink about half a gallon of whole milk per day, maybe more, and a little bit of alcohol on weekends, plus some occasional ice cream.

I've been doing this for about 10 days now, and thankfully I'm not getting any more heartburn (although I discovered that cherries give it to me... wtf). But I seem to be getting a bit fatter around my midsection. Is that surprising, or am I doing something wrong my diet? I figured if anything I'd lean out a bit. I'm not consciously eating any more than I used to, although I suppose the chickens from WF must have a ton of calories.

Fwiw, my training program is basically Wendler's 5/3/1 with a metcon now and then, 5'10 182lbs.

Sorry, I guess I was unclear - I've cut out milk entirely (except for a very small amount of cream in morning coffee), same with alcohol and bread. So I've noticed an increase in fat AFTER cutting out the milk

Lifts: LBBS ~ 350, DL ~ 435, Press ~ 150, pullup 1rm is around 70lbs. I've been doing the 5/3/1 program for about 3 months and they're all going up nicely.

Yikes, I need more protein? According to Fitday, the grass-fed 1.1lb top sirloin I just ate for lunch has 56g of fat and 165g of protein, and the spiced chickens I get from whole foods are another ~50g of fat and 100g of protein

Try moving the fruit away from any other food, and certainly not for breakfast. Might be interesting. Maybe do your bacon and eggs together as nature intended, and eat the fruit together as a snack. The fruit + fat is the only thing I see. Lot of almonds.

- Fat is converted to adipose tissue in a highly efficient process with the metabolic cost involved being very low at ~3% compared with ~24% for carbs.

- Unlike with carbohydrates, protein and alcohol your body doesn't react to dietary fats by immediately and proportianally stimulating their oxidation which increases the odds that they will be stored as adipose tissue.

I could go on but what I'm trying to get across is that if you eat a high fat diet it's highly likely that you'll get fat unless you take great care to control your calorie intake but even then there's a good chance you'll gain a few unwanted pounds.